Lexington Scrabble® Club 2018-2019 Season

This reports on the season which ran from September, 2018 through August, 2019.

The Lexington, Massachusetts Scrabble® Club #108 has been running
continuously since it was started by Edie Berman and Muriel Sands in
January, 1980. We meet nearly every Thursday night of the year in a
comfy basement meeting room of the First Parish Church, situated on
Lexington Green behind the Lexington Minuteman Statue. Judy Horn has
been directing this club for about 36 years.
Judy Cole and Joel Horn serve as associate directors.
Mike Wolfberg joined the club within its first
month of existence, and he took on the role of club statistician within
the first year. The club has operated with its own rating system,
designed primarily by Alan Frank, since early 1981. Ratings are based
on the percentage of points which each of the players scores in each game.
The club web site includes a detailed
description
of this system.

This is a report of the highlights of this club's September 2018 through
August 2019 Season. In this season, individuals played 2244 games,
and so there were
1122 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 390.
These numbers were 2294, 1147, and 393 for the previous season.
Two seasons ago, the average was 390.

Of the 2244 individual games, 2141 were played by an "active player".
We define an active player as someone who played at least 20 games in
the season. The average score of the active players was 390 for the
season. These numbers were 2294, 2196, and 389 for the previous season.

There were 49 club sessions during the season, and
average attendance was 12.1, which is down from 13.1 in the previous season.
These statistics indicate that each player played on the average of about 3.78
games per session. We realize this is higher than in many other clubs, and
so some of this club's achievements in one season should be understood
in this context.

66 different players have attended the club in the past 2 years.
This is equal to 66 one year ago and down from 78 players two years ago.
During the 2018-2019 Season there were
19 (compared with 22 and 27 the two previous seasons)
active players, namely those who played at least 20 games, and here are
the top 16, ordered by decreasing club average rating (not shown
here, but these are in the other table below) :

Club Web Site

Collins Club Ratings

This club started keeping statistics for games played using the
Collins lexicon for the 2011-2012 season. A Collins-specific weekly
stats report is now issued by email and posted on the club web site
even when there were no Collins games played.
The weekly news includes challenged and considered words in NWL2018 games
and Collins games (if any), and the acceptable words shown
are based on the CSW2019 Lexicon. Collins games were played
on 37 evenings during the season and on 24 evenings during the previous
season.

In this season individuals played 200 Collins games, and so there
were 100 such games in all. The average score in all of these games
was 421. These numbers in the previous season were: 136, 68, 424.

These are the average ratings of the players who played at least 20
Collins games in the 2018-2019 Season:

1781.14 Carl Durdan
1779.47 Richard Buck
1751.36 Jake Bergmann

The highest Collins games during the season were:

Richard Buck 601, 588, and 580
Jake Bergmann 567

NASPA ratings

We usually have about 3-6 players in the top 100
rated tournament players in North America,
based on the North American Scrabble® Players Association (NASPA) ratings.
NASPA took over the from the National Scrabble® Association (NSA)
in July, 2009.
Our club roster lists NASPA ratings
of active players; these are updated a few times each year.

ISC Players

Challenges and Postmortems

The club has continued to use the
WHAT
program on one or two laptop computers available to all players at the
club. Players tend to handle their own challenges using the program, and
they often check on racks, etc. after a game is completed to see what
was possible. Since WHAT can provide definitions, this is an
efficient method of doing postmortems.

High Games

The highest game score in a club session during this season was
595 by Judy Horn. Runner-up high scores were:

Joel Horn 593
Richard Buck 589
Daniel Novinson 587

Most Games

Judy Horn played 226 games, which is
2 lower than her previous season's number.
Joel Horn played the second-most
games during the season, with 208 games, which is
1 higher than his previous season's number.
Fourteen seasons ago Judy Horn played 406 games,
which broke the record for the most games in a season.

Most Wins

With 132 wins, Joel Horn had the most wins, which
is 4 higher than his previous season's number.
The runner-up for the most wins was 117 by Steven Saul.
In the previous season, Steven had 113 wins and
Judy Horn had the runner-up number of wins with 110.

Most Points

With a total of 86,561 points,
Judy Horn scored the most points in this season, down from
87,599 in the previous season.
Joel Horn scored 85,929 points.
In the previous season Joel scored 85,307 points.

Highest Percentage Above Average

In order to qualify for the highest percentage above average
accolade, you must have already played at least 20 games in the season.
The highest such game was Judy Horn's 595, and
that was 54.2% above her average.
Runners-up were Daniel Novinson with 48.6%
and Richard Buck with 46.3%.

Many Bingos by Two Players

On 27-Jun-19, in a game between Joel Horn and Mike Wolfberg there were a
total of 7 bingos played: four by Joel and three by Mike.
Joel's bingos were:
SYM(B)OLED,
(N)ATURIsT,
BAI(L)SMEN, and
WEIRDeD.
Mike's bingos were:
PREBOIL,
EVE(N)TFUL, and
(T)ARTNESS.
Joel won with a game score of 472-441.

High Losing Score

The highest loss during this season was Chris Kulig's
501 (to Jake Bergmann's 544).
This also became the 7th-highest total score in club history.
This game set the record for
the highest losing score in club history replacing the previous record
of a 500-point losing score when Steven Saul defeated Joel Horn 546-500
on 7-Oct-2004.

High Total Points

Chris Kulig defeated Bob Becker 572-462 on 20-Dec-18 for a total
of 1034 points. This became the eigth-highest total in this
club's history.

High Non-Bingo

On 7-Feb-19 Steven Saul scored 111 points for
JEEZ at
1A.
There have been 6 games in club history with a higher-scoring non-bingo.

Long Words

We did not make a note of noteworthy long words for this season.

Other Interesting Happenings

On 17-Jan-19, Wes Eddings played FiNITES
underneath EGaLITE. There
was also an R above the
leading letter of EGaLITE.
This was a going-out play scoring 98 points.

High Session Attendance

The highest OWL attendance during this season was
17 players on two evenings.

More Details

Further details for many of the club records mentioned above can be
found on this club's statistics page.